Otago Polytechnic

12/10/2026

Spend a morning with Laura at Te Pā Tauira, our on-campus Student Village 👋

12/10/2026

Congratulations to 2025 Bachelor of Product Design graduate Liam Black, whose Calm Corner sensory space for children has won a 2026 Good Design Australia Award in the Next Gen category! 🏆

Liam is the first of our Product Design students to receive recognition at these awards, which is a fantastic achievement for him, his teaching team, and Otago Polytechnic School of Design 🙌

🔗 See Liam's award-winning Calm Corner on the Good Design website: https://good-design.org/projects/calm-corner/

08/10/2026

The Living Campus and Student Success team is bringing the Living Market back to the Otago Polytechnic for its second year! 🌿☀️

Come along and discover a range of local businesses, makers and creatives, with stalls featuring handmade goods, upcycled treasures, plants, produce, art and more 👀

The market is all about celebrating creativity, community, sustainability and living well and living green. The Living Campus team will also have a stall at the market, selling a selection of quality plants 🪴

📆 Wed 14 October
📍 Dunedin Campus Quad

06/10/2026

how well do you know your blues? 🔵💙🩵

05/10/2026

Otago Polytechnic School of Design is celebrating having five of its ākonga selected as finalists for the 2026 The Designers Institute of New Zealand Best Design Awards, being held in Auckland this Friday 🏆🟣

Our Communication and Product Design programmes were celebrated as finalists, across the Student Animation, Film, Graphics, and Industrial Design categories 🎥🧑‍💻📏

Machiko Niimi, Head of the School of Design, was thrilled to see strong results coming through in the film category this year.

"Alongside our consistently strong Graphic and Product Design outcomes, these achievements are a recognition of the excellent creativity and talent of our students and the support of our experienced staff across a diverse range of design disciplines,” she said.

Read more about each of their awesome projects on our website:

Otago Polytechnic’s School of Design is celebrating having five of its ākonga selected as finalists for the 2026 Best Design Awards, across the film, animation, graphics, and industrial product design categories.

02/10/2026

Otago Polytechnic is celebrating the launch of the new Joint Institute of Hunan Institute of Engineering and Otago Polytechnic (known as the Otago Institute), in the Chinese province of Hunan 🇨🇳

This month's opening ceremony officially welcomed the first cohort of 300 students who will be studying one of three undergraduate programmes jointly delivered by OP and Hunan Institute of Engineering (HIE) staff, in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Information Technology.

The purpose-built Otago Institute campus is expected to host up to 1,200 enrolled students across various stages of study, as the multi-year programme matures. Our specialist teaching staff will be travelling to Xiangtan to deliver regular OP courses in 8-week teaching blocks from September next year.

Read more on our website:

Otago Polytechnic is celebrating the official opening of the new Joint Institute of Hunan Institute of Engineering and Otago Polytechnic (known as the Otago Institute) in the Chinese province of Hunan.

01/10/2026

Mid-sem break is a perfect time to escape the student bubble, and explore some of the hidden gems waiting around Dunedin 🗺️

Just a short scenic drive around the harbour, the bustling Port Chalmers has plenty to see and do when you're keen for a change of pace ⛴️

Where's your favourite local escape? 👀

30/09/2026

Our Food Design Institute recently welcomed a group of secondary school students from around Otago for a ‘Taster Day’ with a difference 👀

As well as inspiring potential students and giving them a taste of what to expect if they chose to study culinary arts at OP, the guests were treated to a special dinner cooked by our year one ākonga 😋

Many of the dishes were their own individual creations and dish designs, giving the high schoolers a real taste of OP's culinary arts programmes.

Read more on out website: https://www.op.ac.nz/about/news-and-media/news/a-real-taste-of-food-design-learning

29/09/2026

Strong performances and attention to detail saw 4 Otago Polytechnic-EarnLearn apprentices triumph in the Dunedin regional heat of the 2026 Trade Master Apprentice Challenge 💪

OP hosted the regional heat of the hands-on competition run by the Master Electricians New Zealand trade organisation, welcoming almost 40 apprentices ⚡️

Congratulations to Caitin Hand (Aotea Electric Southern Ltd) who topped the podium in the hotly-contested Domestic/Commercial section 🏆

And it was a clean sweep for our students in the Industrial category! - Congratulations to Switchbuild Ltd apprentices Zoe Carlton and Ashley Mullan who claimed first and second place, with Casey Henry (Aotea Electric Southern Ltd) finishing third 🙌

Read more on our website:

Strong performances and attention to detail saw four Otago Polytechnic-EarnLearn apprentices triumph in the Dunedin regional heat of the 2026 Trade Master Apprentice Challenge, hosted at our Dunedin campus.

28/09/2026

It’s an exciting time for Otago Polytechnic as we stand alone again and start to shape our strategic direction for the next five years 🙌

We want to understand how we can best support our communities – now and into the future. 🤝

With that in mind, we’d love to hear your thoughts via our short online survey. This closes at 5pm on Wednesday 21 October 📆

By way of example, your insights could help us to:
🔵 Identify where we already have strengths and where we can improve
🔵 Shape how we teach and deliver our learning
🔵 Improve equity and accessibility, and better meet community needs
🔵 Address regional workforce needs.

Thank you for any time and thoughts you can share – we’re looking forward to Otago Polytechnic’s next chapter knowing we will have shaped it together 💚

🧑‍💻 Find out more, and access the online survey via our website:

Otago Polytechnic is seeeking your feedback as we move into an exciting phase and create and shape our strategic direction for the next five years.